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Saturday, September 25, 2010

Ban my books, please

Banning books is serious business. For the record, I am against it. Against censorship. Let people read what they want to read. Having said that, I've noticed that banned books get an awful lot of attention in the media.Banners don't seem to get that the quickest way to make someone want to check out a book (especially a kid!) is to say you can't read it.

So I'm thinking...won't one of y'all try to ban my books? There's not any violence in them, but, for some reason, book banners don't seem to care about that. But I use the "n-word" in Children of the Waters and the "f word" in Orange Mint and Honey. Both my novels have, gasp, sex. Ooh, ooh and Children of the Waters has a character who doesn't believe in God!

As a matter of fact, there are lots of worthy books out there some nutcake could do a great favor by trying to encourage the world to run out and read ban.

In all seriousness, today is the beginning of Banned Books Week. Celebrate your right to read by buying or borrowing from the library a book that has been challenged or banned. If someone wants to keep you from reading it, it's almost guaranteed to be worth reading.

I considered a post similar to this but couldn't find more than anecdotal evidence that banning books increases sales. If you look at the list of banned books, they're extremely popular books that have excellent sales before they're banned. Placing them on the ALA list guarantees continued sales!

I know there are schools that with numerous reasons have adult urban lit in their collects, but no one ever, ever wants them withdrawn. So, just how political is this book banning thing? It's looking almost as political as the way publishers censor what gets published.